Trending Now

You are here

Mammoth will be a paradise, Rec Commission says

In 10 years, Mammoth will be the best alpine community in the country.

It will have gobs of winter and summer recreation, miles of trails, a plethora of special events and high-altitude athletes absorbing a cornucopia of art and culture.

Our townspeople will be playing soccer and football, the kids will have great sports camps and the skiing and snowboarding will be simply fabulous.

So says a vision statement that the Mammoth Lakes Recreation Commission handed up to the Town Council on Tuesday afternoon on a unanimous and enthusiastic vote.

“It’s all attainable,” said commissioner Tony Colosardo.

“We could wind up in a pretty exciting place,” said public works director Ray Jarvis.

The vision is contained in a report called “RECSTRATS – Recreation Vision and Strategies in Mammoth Lakes, California.”

It was directed by a group of town leaders and facilitated by Carl Ribaudo, of the Strategic Marketing Group in South Lake Tahoe, who on Tuesday delivered a slick PowerPoint summary of the 32-page report.

Funded and supported by the Mammoth Lakes Trails and Public Access Foundation, the vision statement seeks to organize all of Mammoth’s disparate recreation user groups (19 on the new Sports Council and counting), government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.
At its core, the document suggests seven strategies:

When Ribaudo was finished, the commission had a plan, outlining a method strategy by which Mammoth can use the $20 million Measure R funds over the next 10 years, and without townspeople tearing at each other’s throats.

“This is geared toward getting us on the same path,” Jarvis said, “so we can prioritize what’s important, then figure out how to do that.”

The lynchpin factors are the continued cooperation with the Inyo National Forest and the recreation commission’s ability to aggressively keep the ball rolling, everyone agreed.

Among the audience members, Eastside Velo’s John Armstrong was perhaps the most eloquent in praising the commission’s action to accept the vision statement and pass it on.

“There’s $20 million, and in 10 years it will be 2020, and that implies a vision,” he said.